OUR HARBOR WORKS.

Evening Star, Issue 6815, 1 February 1886, Page 3

OUR HARBOR WORKS.

The 'Lyttelton Times' devotes a couple of its columns to a description of the Harbor Board's operations. We make the following extracts : The Board will own some 200 acres [of reclamation] when all is finished. Government, by that convenient machinery under which almost anything can be done—" the Governor-in-Council"—have already taken, for far less than their real value, sixty-seven acres of this reclaimed land, and have effectually cut off Dunedin from the water by forming thero one of the largest and most extensive passenger and goods stations combined to be found in any British possession. Merchants and tradespeople, who had for yea: a been accustomed to get down to the sea with their drays via Jetty street, rose in arms, and a big stone high-level bridge to cross the line was projected, and the piers and approaches stand there to-day, the tomb of 40,000 good pounds sterling. The bridge is hardly likely to be finished, and still less likely to be used if made, but will serve as an everlasting monument of a blundering piece of colonial public works policy. Thus are evils mitigated. It may bo an injustice to say so, but surely Dunedin people do not half appreciate their beautiful harbor. In Sydney they talk of theirs unceasingly, and the Aucklander is ready to skin and eat, without salt, anyone who says a word in dispraise or disparagement of his lovely Waiteinata. Hero you seldom hear the word " harbor " mentioned, and yet the lower bay past Port Chalmers will compare vith almost any beautiful harbor in tho world. Anywhere else there would be excursions and trips and picnics to Taiaroa Head every day during the summer. In Dunedin, if you wish to get there by water, you must do so through the kindness of some wealthy friend with a private launch, or as tho guest of a Customs otlicer or Harbor Board official ; public steamers there are none. Yet anyone who leaves Dunedin without a trip down the bay has departed without learning the chief charm of the place. There aro always inquiring people in the world, and therefore sundry of the readers of this article will inquire: " Yes ; but how about the bar. The staging and the dredging and all the rest of it sounds very nice and progressive, but does it do any good ?" Yes, inquiring reader, it does ! It is true that the big dredge, built only for working in still water, cannot work on the bar for more than fifty days out of the year, and that 27,000 cubic yards of stuff was her load of sand removed last year, a good deal of which "makes up" again. But in spite of this there is a steady improvement. When the big dredge set to work on the bar, in 1879, there was only 16ft 6in for certain at low water. There is now always 20ft, and sometimes more. The trainingwall and tho dredge together are doing their appointed work, though it is difficult to apportion results fairly between them. The average depth for ISBS was lain better than in ISS4. At neap tides there are generally 23ft 6in to be found ; and last Wednesday, when I visited the works, with a good breeze in from seawards, there was 27ft Oiu at high water, and no swell to trouble a long vessel. " Some of these days"—a fairy time of old age, equivalent in glory to the golden "once upon a time "of youth—the long training! wall w'ill have scoured away the bar, the projected short breakwater at Taiaroa Head will prevent it " making up" in its old wicked way ; the channel will have been straightened ; the corner of Goat Island will have been cut away, so that ship captains may see ahead of them at the narrow gut, and not ram each other to matchwood turning the corner there ; Victoria channel will be broader and deeper still, and at the head of tho Clyde of New Zealand will stand—we are all certain of it —a city fairer and pleasantcr to look upon than the Glasgow of Scotland, if not so wealthy.